Welcome to IBM Documentation Offline

Deploy IBM Documentation Offline to view product documentation without an internet connection. Designed for organizations running in a dark shop environment, IBM Documentation Offline offers two deployment types:

• Desktop application – available for macOS, Windows, or Linux. IBM Documentation desktop is built using Electron, a framework for building desktop applications that use web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Node.js based, IBM Documentation uses an electron wrapper to provide a local desktop version that you can run offline from your desktop.
• Intranet version - the ability to host the electron package on an intranet server. This version includes shell scripts and a configuration file for your admin to set up the intranet deployment. The intranet version also includes a docker file from which you can build a Docker image to deploy IBM Documentation.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The intranet version is only available bundled with products that support it. The intranet version is not customer installable.

Download and Setting up IBM Documentation Offline

Setting up IBM Documentation Offline application (the app) is a multi-step process:

• Download – requires you to download two different archived files.
  • Download the app.
  • Download the product documentation set that you want to view and access offline.
• Installation and setup – requires you to install the app and add the product documentation to it.

IBM Documentation Offline application download instructions

The application is available to download for many operating systems. Choose the system that best fits your offline environment then login with your IBMid to download the application. Once you have downloaded the application, transfer it to your offline environment computer. This could be done through use of a memory stick or USB device.

Before downloading, you will be prompted to accept our license agreement.

Downloading product documentation sets

You will need internet access to download the product documentation for use in the offline application, plan accordingly.

1. Visit the IBM Documentation page for the product documentation and specific version you want available offline. Be sure to navigate to a topic and not the welcome page. For example, for db2 navigate to: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2/11.5 and select one of the topics, like “Accessibility features”

2. If you are not already logged in, log in with your IBMid. You must be logged in to access the product download in the next step.
3. Once you are logged in, at the bottom of the left-hand navigation click the “Offline docs download” button to download that set of product documentation. This will download all available languages as part of the file. You will select which language(s) you would like in the upload phase inside the application.
4. The downloaded product documentation set is an archive which you can upload using the application. Transfer the file to your offline environment computer like you did for the application file.

IBM Documentation Offline desktop application installation and setup

IBM Documentation Offline desktop application installation and setup is a two-step process:

• install the desktop application that you downloaded, and you need to add the documentation set.
• add the downloaded product documentation step to the application that you just installed.

Installing the desktop application

1. When on your local machine in the offline environment, run the application to initiate the install. You can do this by double-clicking the application download file (.exe) or by right clicking the file and selecting “open” or “run”. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
2. Once the installation is complete, find the application on your computer (either as a desktop short cut or in your applications folder). The initial load may be slow. Once it is fully loaded you will see a blank home page with upload instructions. The next step is to upload the product documentation you need that you previously downloaded.

Adding product documentation sets to the Offline desktop application

1. From the application home page, select “upload or update docs” from the right-hand menu. This will open a file explorer. Select the product documentation archive you download previously.
2. After you click upload, a card will become available on the application home page. You may see an indicator showing the loading status of the documentation and the search index. Once the content package finishes uploading and unpacking, a tile will be active, and you can click on it to open the product documentation offline.
3. Feel free to delete the documentation archive from your memory stick or computer. It is no longer needed.

FAQs

• Question: Why can't I download the intranet version?Answer: The intranet version is only available to internal IBM Development teams who have decided to partner with IBM Documentation and make an intranet version of the IBM Documentation Offline product available via an intranet. This is typical for dark shops that have admins who manage documentation access or for products that do not have UIs, but a console.
• Question: When will the macOS version be available?Answer: macOS version is pending certification. You can still download the mac version, but you need to click Allow when you get the error message.
• Question: I downloaded for Linux, and I cannot open the executable. How can I fix this?Answer: If running IBM Documentation Offline on Linux, if double click doesn't work to open the application, then you need to drag and drop it to the terminal to run the application.
• Question: How do videos and links work in IBM Documentation Offline?Answer: If a content collection points to other collections, those linked collections are included in the download and all links will work. For external links, all links should work if you are online and have internet access. If you are not online, like with previous versions of our dark shop application (known as KCCI), external links will not work, like when Knowledge Center Customer Installable (KCCI) was deployed offline. Videos – if videos are embedded into a topic and stored in IBM Documentation cloud object storage, customers will be able to access videos, otherwise videos will not play. If you are online and video is not restricted in any way, it will open and play correctly.
• Question: How does search work?Answer: IBM Documentation Offline uses the Flex search engine, whereas IBM Documentation hosted site search is unified with IBM masthead search, which uses the Elastic search engine. This difference means that search results will be similar but will not be identical.
• Question: Does IBM Documentation Offline notify me when there is updated content to download?Answer: Not yet but coming soon we will introduce this feature that notifies anyone using IBM Documentation Offline that the application and/or the content have been updated.
• Question: Can I add custom content to my offline version?Answer: Post MVP, we will introduce this feature that allows you to upload your own content into IBM Documentation Offline in a custom folder to search and access within the offline version.

Updates

Now that you have your offline documentation running on your local machine, how do you keep your documentation in sync with the latest updates? The online doc set will indicate when content has been updated or added, and a new download is available.While logged in, the original document download button will update to let you know if you are in sync or an update is available. Download the new documentation set as before, and re-upload into the application.